Standing desk

Around October 2010, I gave in to the crazy idea that I should build myself a standing desk. I had been scattering my projects around the house and my previous desk didn’t offer enough working space for anything other than reading or working on my laptop. The design and construction process lasted through January, and I couldn’t be happier with the results.

After the first week of use–five to eleven hours per day–I’ve just been a little sore, but I can already tell that I’m more focused on what I’m working on. I’ve been using the drafting chair for about 20 minutes every three hours or so. The five feet of working space that I have to work with now is great, and there’s plenty of room to also set up my laptop and sketch.

Update 07.19.2011: I’ve been missing my desk something fierce this summer, and can’t wait to get back to it. Since I wrote this post, I’ve had a lot of people interested in building this desk. I have done some updates since I built it, and plan to do a few more. Namely, I added a few more coats of poly to the top of the desk, built a stand for the monitor and speakers–which are now both at eye level–and am in the process of adding some cross-bracing to the back thanks to the folks at Tinkering Monkey. I’ll be sure to add pictures come September!

The process

It had been about a year since the idea to build a standing desk crossed my mind. There was an article released describing a hand-built standing desk over on Lifehacker that planted the idea in my mind to build something similar. It looked great and looked like something I might actually be able to build. Before actually doing any design on the desk, I tried to figure out if I could handle standing all day. I stacked books on the kitchen bar in my apartment until what felt was a good height to work, then tested it out for a couple weeks while working from home on my laptop. Back on campus, I was also standing at the tall tables in the design studio. So I built it.

The design

The desk was built and assembled in my apartment, and I didn’t run into any major problems along the way. I will have to change some of the structure later on, as all the joints are connected with 1″ L brackets that really aren’t that stable, so there is a slight wobble to it. Despite that and the height, my setup keeps it stable enough. My next project is to use some leftover plywood and the 8″x8″x8″ blocks I have for my speakers to bring the monitor and speakers up to eye level.

As for the building, I applied red oak veneer to the edges of the plywood, which looks great. I also could have left the back of the plywood unfinished and used just one package. The legs and supports each were given one coat of stain and two coats of polyurethane. The plywood was given a coat of stain, then two coats of polyurethane. It may have been my sub-par sanding skills or just the wood, but the plywood wasn’t dark enough. Another coat of stain was applied over the polyurethane then a final coat was applied (in total, two coats stain, three poly).